People Are Getting Exorcisms Instead of Going to the Doctor

July 11, 2017

Illustration by Chris Visions

When serious medical conditions are misdiagnosed as demonic possession, it can lead to some pretty disastrous consequences—even death.

Marie McClellan told me that she was 15 when she first thought a demon was inside her. A blossoming Canadian girl with dyed green hair and an oversized flannel shirt, she was attending rehearsal for an Easter play at her evangelical church in New Brunswick when she began to feel a fear crawling under her skin. As an actor playing Jesus was being nailed to a cross with fake blood dripping from his hands and face, McClellan started breathing rapidly and violently scratching herself.

“I didn’t know what was happening to me, I just knew I had to get out of there,” she told me over the phone, as she reflected on that harrowing night in 1995. Her behavior was so frantic that she was approached by a pastor, who she said pinned her arms to the floor. His touch only caused her more terror—a common sign of demonic possession.

“Have you ever played with a Ouija Board?” he asked. McClellan nodded. The pastor explained that she had a demon inside of her (likely angered by the site of a real-life crucifix). It was a concept that filled her with horror and a kind of psychological detachment from her own body.

McClellan didn’t know this pastor (he was from another church), but she believed him. He kept her pinned to the floor for a few minutes, praying over her. After he left, she never saw him again.

Finding no relief from the pastor’s prayer, McClellan told me that she began cutting herself in the months and years that followed, finding comfort in harming this body she thought was inhabited by a demon.

Three years after that initial incident, McClellan still believed a demon was tormenting her. One night while she was working as a church camp counselor just outside Sussex, she felt it take control of her body once again. She told me that she began to rock back and forth, mumbling to herself. A prayer circle of church camp counselors and pastors enfolded her and attempted to perform an exorcism, which she said only intensified her terror.

“Someone was always praying over me. A lot of it wasn’t in English. Everyone was speaking in tongues. They were grilling me to confess my sins, and as each sin was confessed they called upon the Holy Spirit to drive that demon out of me.”

Eventually McClellan collapsed from exhaustion, which was seen as a sign that the demon had left her body.

Today, McClellan no longer believes she was possessed by a demon. Instead, medical professionals have deduced that she was suffering from an anxiety disorder, which was worsened by the suggestion of demonic possession (leading to the cutting) and later the experience of being restrained in an exorcism.